Tramper, software engineer and essayist, Rose Lu has been the New Zealand writer-in-residence for the past six months at Randell Cottage, working on her first novel. Currently untitled, the project follows the story of Moon, a second-generation Chinese-New Zealander, and Hsiao-Han, who migrated to Aotearoa New Zealand in her mid-twenties.
“I want this book to be divorced from the expectation that POC are thinking about their race in relation to a Pākehā majority, by having the primary dialogue be between Chinese and Taiwanese characters. I also want to challenge mainstream notions of representation. We all have complicated relationships to home, family and language, and I want to write a story set across different times and generations to explore that.”
Join Rose in this event hosted by the Friends of Randell Cottage as she talks about her work — her 2019 essay collection All Who Live on Islands and her new book.